CT Senate: Lieberman Could Run as Indie

Providing more fodder for his critics within the party, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said yesterday that he would not rule out running as an Independent for re-election in 2006 should he lose the Democratic nomination.

"I have not foreclosed the option," Lieberman said at a press conference in Hartford yesterday before adding somewhat inexplicably: "If I wanted to run as an Independent, I would. I'm running as a Democrat. I've been a Democrat all of my life."

Should Lieberman decide to pursue an Independent bid, he would need to collect petitions from one percent of the number of people who voted in the last Senate election, which would be Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd's 2004 election race in which 1,424,726 votes were cast. Based on that number, Lieberman would need around 14,247 signatures.

"The truth is we have not devoted one minute of time to this scenario," said Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith Tuesday. "From a campaign perspective we are running aggressively to win the Democratic nomination and we expect to be the Democratic nominee."

Lieberman has drawn the ire of many liberals within his own party for his staunch support for the war in Iraq, and businessman Ned Lamont has made the issue the centerpiece of his primary campaign against the three-term incumbent. Lamont has picked up some high-profile national support for his candidacy, most notably from Jim Dean, the chairman of Democracy for America -- the organization founded by his brother, Howard Dean, during the latter's 2004 presidential bid.

The two will face off in the May 20 endorsement convention, which has little practical significance because no matter which candidate wins the official endorsement the other can run against him in the Aug. 8 primary. In order to qualify for the primary ballot, a candidate needs to win at least 15 percent of the convention delegates in attendance or collect signatures from two percent of registered Democrats in the state.

The primary in Connecticut is closed, meaning that only registered Democrats can vote -- a rule that should benefit Lamont. But the challenger has a long way to go to be a serious threat to Lieberman. Although no recent polling has been released publicly, a February Quinnipiac University survey showed Lieberman with a 68 percent to 13 percent lead over Lamont.

Regardless of the eventual outcome in the primary, Democrats are extremely likely to retain the seat in the fall as no serious Republican candidate has emerged.

1. Not all Republicans are in favor of the violation(s) of our Constitution which have been perpetrated by the current administration for the last 6 years. Not all Republicans advocate lying by our government. This too shall pass.
2. Professor Jones is an appropriately tenured Professor of the faculty of Brigham Young University. His credentials are remarkable, his request is un-remarkable. Why un-remarkable? Because all he is asking for is a thorough, basically pro-forma evidentiary review and metallurgical analysis of the metal and evidence from the WTC North, WTC South and WT7. There is an old adage in the aviation accident investigation business: Show me the metal and I will show you what happened to cause the crash. Metal does not lie. The same holds true for the WTC disaster. Only the metal has disappeared. We scraped up every last bit of metal off the floor of the Atlantic and rebuilt the airplanes in hangar's when we wanted to know what happened to TWA, KLM, EgyptAir and American Airlines airplanes. That is what NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) accident investigators are required to do. They have no choice. Political jurisdiction, police, even the military in some cases, come under the supervision of the NTSB investigators, partially in order that scientific standards are equally applied-but also such that no outside political or criminal interference can be injected into the process. So why the shoddy investigative and analytical analysis performed on the WTC by the 9/11 Commission.
3. Only one newservice in this country, the Deseret News has the intellectual courage and honesty to report on Professor Jone's simple request for scientific review of the evidence in the WTC disaster. The rest of the news media in this country are basically spineless with no demonstrated driver towards truth.
4. To say the Republican party has not put up a contestant for the seat of Senator Liebermann is not true, yes they have-they have Senator Liebermann.
5. And oh, by the way, I quit the Republican party when it was taken over my Rupert Murdoch and the PNAC.

Ah, Democrats ... we who so unfailingly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. If we true Democrats, who believe in choice, the environment, social programs, education, peace, etc. would have the guts to take back the party from the faux-Republicans like Lieberman and Hillary Rodham Clinton and nominate, say, Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi as Pres. and VP in 2008 -- only then could this country return to greatness. The Dems have a heaven-sent opportunity to WIN, given the complete implosion of the once-rational-but-now-theocratic GOP, yet most Dems ran screaming from Russ Feingold's very-tame proposal to censure (censure! not impeach!) Bush. Apparently some Dems are still not comfortable with the idea of winning.

I was a lifelong Democrat until the party was taken over by the looney left. Unfortunately one of my Senators is charter member of that group- Barbara Boxer.
It would be great if she, Feingold, and Durbin would form their own party. Howard Dean could lead them and Nancy Pelosi could recruit candidates for the House.
I'm sure Al Sharpton would be more than welcome. (If the Republicans embraced a demagogue like Sharpton -say, David Duke) they would be denounced by every respectable news source in America, probably the world.)
Such a party would bring more clarity to the nation and allow people to vote their
real opinions.

What no one has mentioned and what I find most remarkable is that Lieberman even addressed the issue of running as an independant. This is the surest sign that he is really worried or he is the dumbest politician in CT.

Chris, I wish you would stop citing that Quinnipiac poll when talking about this primary race. It was conducted BEFORE Lamont even declared his candidacy against Lieberman. It's frankly incredible that he polled 13% under those circumstances, and a sign perhaps not of his strong support, but definitely of Lieberman's great weakness across the state. Otherwise, the poll itself is completely irrelevant. There's no more recent poll data, but look toward other salient facts: for example, Lamont has exceeded 4,000 unique campaign contributions in less than two months of campaigning.

Chris, I wish you would stop citing that Quinnipiac poll when talking about this primary race. It was conducted BEFORE Lamont even declared his candidacy against Lieberman. It's frankly incredible that he polled 13% under those circumstances, and a sign perhaps not of his strong support, but definitely of Lieberman's great weakness across the state. Otherwise, the poll itself is completely irrelevant. There's no more recent poll data, but look toward other salient facts: for example, Lamont has exceeded 4,000 unique campaign contributions in less than two months of campaigning.

By the way it would be great for the Democratic party if Lieberman was appointed Sec of Defense. First of all, that would mean Rumsfeld would have resigend or been fired, which would be great for the country if that incompetent fool was taken out of power. No matter what you think of Joe Lieberman, you have to admit anyone would do a better job than that idiot Rumsfeld. Second, we would be losing one more republican in the Senate and gaining a Democrat, which would be great for the Dem part and the country.

Idiot Republicans like Karen who post on this site should abstain from giving democrats their opinion on who we should choose in our own Senate primaries. Democrats on this blog don't waste their time weighing in on Republican primaries. Not to mention the fact that Lieberman's stance on the Iraq War is only one of about a thousand reasons why democrats hate Joe Lieberman. Let's see - there's his nanny effort to censor music, his role in the Terry Schiavo affair, his call to censure Clinton, his refusal to support the censure of Bush, rolling over and playing dead during the 2000 election recount, etc, etc, etc. Before any more buffoon rethuglicans weigh in on this race, I would urge them to do at least a little bit of research on WHY we support Ned Lamont.

The problem Lieberman has with liberals is that he talks down to us. He makes for an interesting comparison with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Senator Nelson comes from a very red state and votes with the Democratic Party far less often than Lieberman. However, Nelson doesn't appear frequently on Sean Hannity and and bash liberal values the way Lieberman does. Nelson will simply say something like, "I have to represent my constitutients and I appreciate the Democratic Party for accepting a diversity of views." He won't attack the patriots of liberals for dissenting from the war.

I can appreciate having a Dem Senator in Nebraksa and understand he must be more conservative than me. But at least his tone is honorable and respectful.

Lieberman represents a very blue state yet sees fit to attack the patriotism and values of liberal Democrats. I respect what Lieberman did as a young man in going to the Deep South in the sixties and standing up for civil rights - and risking his life. But he no longer merits being a nominee of his party on any level.

John -- Maybe Lamont can make it close, but right now the polling doesn't show that that's the case. It's great to say that Lieberman's views on some major issues are unpopular -- which they certainly are. It's something else to get the people that don't like those views to affirmatively vote for someone else.

FYI - I'm not a fan of Joementum by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, I don't think he's comparable to Zell Miller and will be very surprised if he ultimately runs as an an Indep.

It just occurred to me that maybe Karen is one of those Republicans still under the Bush Administration-nurtured delusion that Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11. As we all walked into the voting booth in November 2004, fully 52% of Republicans STILL believed this. Yes, they are that out of touch with reality.

And, perhaps more sadly, 85% of our troops in Iraq still believe this lie, and believe retaliating for it is their purpose there. Is this America? If it is, I'm ashamed of it. How did a formerly first-world country get so pathetically uneducated so quickly?

"Strong leadership to defend our nation is one key reason why Kerry lost in 2004, just too wimpy."

Wow. The utter, complete ignorance of what constitutes real strength (hint: it is one part wisdom and restraint) is the reason that pro-Iraq war conservatives are now generally seen as the central shame and enduring albatross of this nation.

I certainly hope that the next president, be he Democrat, Republican or other, will have the "strength and resolve" to bomb Karen's home and those of all of her friends and family into oblivion. I realize Karen has done nothing and is not a threat to the country (except perhaps through her misguided voting), but we don't want the next president to be a wimp.

That's what we've done in Iraq. 130,000+ dead, civil war in places, electricity grid still not what it was before we destroyed it, and the terrorists have a new "University" in which to study. Wonderful. Too many more demonstrations of "strength" like this and we will be finished as a respected world power.

"If this were a republican senator getting clotheslined, it would be front page news. Notice how the media is hiding the left-wing's rebellion against the only sane Democrat????"

Let's see, now where did I link to this piece from... oh yeah, the front page of washingtonpost.com. Chalk another one up for that famous "liberal media conspiracy" (tm).

I especially love the way the "liberal media" has called Bush on every single one of his manipulations and distortions of the truth during both the runup to, and prosecution of, the American petroleum industry's Iraqi Oil Field Annexation. Oh wait, they didn't. What good is this "liberal media" anyhow?

It is hardly the case "the challenger has a long way to go." Just a few short weeks after declaring his candidacy, Joe Lieberman, an 18-year incumbent senator, is openly discussing the possibility of bolting the party and running as an independent. That shows that Lieberman is in big, big trouble.

And take a look at the elections for delegates at the town-level party committees for the state convention. In many towns, the majority of delegates are declaring for Ned Lamont. In Ridgefield, 8 of 11 declared for Lamont; in Greenwich, 16, including the town party chairman, of 22 (none for Lieberman); in Fairfield, half went to Lamont. In short, there is a very real possibility that Lamont could win party's nomination with a majority of delegates at the May convention. Just a few short weeks ago, no one expected Lamont to garner even the 15% of delegate votes necessary to force a primary. Now it is Lieberman who is forced to consider gathering signatures in order to get on the ballot in November.

And take a closer look at that Quinnipiac poll. Barely half of all Democrats responded that they thought Lieberman was doing a good job. Only 54% responded that they wanted the party to renominate Lieberman for a fourth term, and that was weeks before Ned Lamont even appeared on the scene. More critical for Lieberman was the 74% of Democrats who stated that they disagreed with Lieberman's stance on the Iraq War, and, half of those said that they were prepared to vote against him on that issue alone. That means that Ned Lamont could pick up 36% of the vote virtually automatically on the issue of Iraq.

Lieberman's suggestion that he will run as an independent if denied the Democratic nomination is just one more illustration of his contempt for the Democratic Party. There are many, many more. Despite the fact that two-thirds of Democrats favor censuring President Bush, Lieberman, who led the movement to censure Bill Clinton, even after he was found not-guilty in his trial in the Senate, can't be bothered to consider censuring George Bush.

We're fed up with Democrats who pander to the Far Right, and we in Connecticut are sending a message to Democratic leaders across the country to stand up and fight for Democratic ideals. No more pandering; fight back!

I don't really disagree that much, if at all, with those who criticize Che's posts. It's just that I don't think he is violating any rules and therefore should be allowed to post unless the rules are changed. Otherwise, it is a restriction of free speech in my opinion.

While I disagree with Sen. Lieberman on the war in Iraq and a few other issues, I greatly respect him as a human being. I wish him and his lovely family the best. That doesn't mean I am taking sides on his re-election--I just think his motivations are pure and he is with the Democrats on most issues. He is definitely not like Zell Miller.

Lieberman is the only Dem who walks on the same hawkish path as FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. Strong leadership to defend our nation is one key reason why Kerry lost in 2004, just too wimpy.

Lieberman is on the lips of reporters as the person to replace Rumsfeld. I bet that would stick in the gullet of the liberal side of the Dem party.

The sooner the Dems realize that defending our nation is key to any chance of winning the White House, the sooner they will find someone, (WHO?) for 2008. No name comes to mind of who is a hawk, and who can rally the Dems to stand up for what used to be the party of FDR.

EPHRAIM — A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.

The government requires standard explosives to contain tag elements enabling them to be traced back to their manufacturers. But no tags are required in aluminum and iron oxide, the materials used to make thermite, he said. Nor, he said, are tags required in sulfur.

Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers.

The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site.

Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.

At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster.

He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."

He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.

But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.

Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.

Jones said a piece of building wreckage had a gray substance on the outside that at one point had obviously been a dripping molten metal or liquid. He said that after thermite turns steel or iron into a molten form, and the metal hardens, it is gray.

He added that pools of molten metal were found beneath both trade towers and the 47-story WTC 7. That fact, he said, was never discussed in official investigation reports.

And even though WTC 7 was not connected to the Trade Towers — in fact, there was another building between it and the towers —and even though it was never hit by a plane, it collapsed. That suggests, he said, that it came down because a thermite fire caused its structural steel to fail.

Jones said his studies are confined to physical causes of the collapses, and he doesn't like to speculate about who might have entered the buildings and placed thermite and sulfur. But he said 10 to 20 people "in the know," plus other people who didn't know what they were doing but did what they were told, could have placed incendiary packages over several weeks.

The mere fact that someone as conservative as I belive Karen is supports Lieberman is an argument in favor of Lamont. That being said, I think the reason this isn't front page news is the polling data cited in the post. As of now, Lamont still has no chance in a primary...

Opposition to Lieberman's positions is not just a left-wing phenomenon. The man continues to insist on a neoconservative strategy to the Iraq mess in spite of overwhelming evidence that rationale for the war was deliberately fraudulent, has done nothing but squander dollars, lives, and moral capital; and is the primary factor in a region on the verge of civil war...all while our troops and civilians are stuck in the middle.

Add to that that he spends hours as Fox's resident Zell Miller bashing fellow members of the party for having the gall to question this administration while nearly open mouth kissing W at the SOU. It isn't hard to see why he is plummeting....he's riding W's coattails to the bottom. Have you Lieberman apologists even looked at the polls on the issues that he supports? This is not merely a blog phenomenon....the man is out of touch with the nation and his own constituents.

Lieberman is a hawkish, pro-business Democrat from a state that is home to the city known as the "insurance capital of the world" and also to the HQ of GE, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky Aircraft and Electric Boat.

Yes, his positions are sometimes maddening to liberal Democrats, but they fail to take into account where he's from.

Lieberman will win the Democratic primary and another Senate term in November.

I don't get the opposition to Lieberman from the hard left blogosphere?? Iraq has shown itself election after election to be a non-starter..in Australia, here in the US, in the UK and even yesterday in Italy. If the left is basing its opposition against Lieberman to Iraq as compared to his whole record which is not indistingushable from most sensible Democrats..then they are crazy. Lieberman will be the Dem nominee..the blogs are good at making a lot of noise but miserable at ground elections...I think a candidate is actually at a disadvantage if tied to blogs. And if he does decide to run as an Indie..then I'm backing him too..enough of this mindless ideological chatter!!